Researchers at Purdue University have developed a technique to better predict chemotherapy resistance in canines and humans.
Chemotherapy can save lives, but often a cancer patient may be resistant to their prescribed chemotherapy, which costs the patient valuable time. Chemoresistance is a topic that researchers need to understand better so that they can match the right type of chemo to the right patient, which is called personalized medicine.
An unusual pairing of veterinary scientists and physicists believe their method of detecting chemoresistance could be the new standard for personalized medicine. Their method is unexpected: Doppler ultrasound. Many people may have heard the term Doppler, either from the weather reports to detect storm activity or expectant parents who see their unborn child for the first time.
Now, a team of physicists and veterinary scientists at Purdue University is using ultrasound to detect how cancer cells respond to chemotherapy. They currently have their method of personalized chemotherapy detection in Phase-2 clinical trials in humans at the IU School of Medicine and have also been using the method in canine trials. The concept was born in 2015 by three researchers at Purdue: David Nolte, principal investigator and Edward M. Purcell Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, John Turek, Professor of Basic Medical Sciences, and Michael Childress, Professor of Comparative Oncology. Nolte is from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Purdue College of Science and Turek and Childress are from the Purdue College of Veterinary Medicine. All three are members of